Vice President JD Vance said on Wednesday that the US applied “leverage” to Israel to get it to agree to a Gaza ceasefire deal, marking the first public suggestion from a US official that it was necessary to put pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reach an agreement.
Vance made the comments at the University of Mississippi during a Turning Point USA event when asked by a student why the US provides Israel with billions of dollars in military aid to support “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.
Vance replied by saying that an “America First” foreign policy doesn’t mean you’re “not going to have alliances, that you’re not going to work with other countries from time to time,” and that President Trump believes that “Israel sometimes they have similar interests to the United States, and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes they don’t have similar interests to the United States.”
“The most recent Gaza peace plan that all of us have been working on very hard for the past few weeks — the president of the United States could only get that peace deal done by actually being willing to apply leverage to the State of Israel,” the vice president added. “When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the President of the United States, they’re not controlling this President of the United States.”
While Vance suggested the US has put pressure on Israel, since the ceasefire deal was signed, the US has backed Israel’s violations and attacks, which have killed over 200 Palestinians since the truce went into effect on October 10. After Israel began launching massive airstrikes on Tuesday, Vance downplayed the attacks as a “little skirmish.”
The Israeli strikes killed at least 104 people, including 46 children and 20 women, and the attack on Israel started after one of its soldiers involved in demolition operations in Rafah, southern Gaza, was killed. Israel claimed Hamas was responsible for the attack, but according to Israeli media, Israel didn’t know if Hamas leadership was responsible or if it was just the act of an isolated cell of Palestinian militants.
Despite the uncertainty, which Vance appeared to acknowledge in his statement by saying Hamas or “somebody else” attacked an IDF soldier, the US strongly backed Israel’s major escalation. “They killed an Israeli soldier. So the Israelis hit back. And they should hit back,” President Trump said.
